How to Automatically Remove Dead Code?

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Extra Headers? Does My Compiler Automatically Remove Dead Code? // New programmers often worry if there's a downside to including header files that we don't use. What about dead code — code that I write, but don't ever call? In this video, we look into the issue of dead code and what our compilers can do to help us remove it.



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Welcome! I post videos that help you learn to program and become a more confident software developer. I cover beginner-to-advanced systems topics ranging from network programming, threads, processes, operating systems, embedded systems and others. My goal is to help you get under-the-hood and better understand how computers work and how you can use them to become stronger students and more capable professional developers.

About me: I'm a computer scientist, electrical engineer, researcher, and teacher. I specialize in embedded systems, mobile computing, sensor networks, and the Internet of Things. I teach systems and networking courses at Clemson University, where I also lead the PERSIST research lab.

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[notnullnotvoid]

Something very useful to know is that if a function is marked static, then the compiler can see that it isn't called from within that translation unit and omit it from the object file before the linker even sees it. Clang and MSVC do this even at -O0, and GCC does it at -O1 and above. Marking functions static will also help the compiler to know that it should inline if it sees that the function is only called from one place.

[rohandvivedi]

To anyone who wants more details about how he did it.
1. There is a -ffunction-sections, a compiler option that creates separate sections for each one of your functions on the compilation step. (else only 1 .text section is created for a translation unit)
2. then the -dead_strip linker option (I guess this is Mac-specific), that removes the sections to which you never jumped to from your main function. This is because only while linking, your compiler may check all the generated symbol tables from different translation units.

@Jacob Sorber, If possible can you make a video on linker scripts and code layout as well, for embedded system.
Thank you so much for your videos, I really appreciate your work <3.

[shobhitmishra]

Your videos are easy to understand than most of the material out there...

[MsRPBang]

Your videos are very informative, I always have to see twice to understand completely

[MH-rifb]

Another method that has been effective in my company’s embedded compilation is link time optimization (provided that your compiler supports LTO plug-in of course). We’ve had better success in some cases with -O2 -flto than with -Os actually! Though I have heard for some LTO bloats their binaries, so YMMV — most likely depends on the toolchain’s implementation

[rafalmichalski]

Great video as usual. I think there should be such materials showing different compiler/linker flags.

[XenoTravis]

A video on the different methods of sleeping a program would be cool!!!

[brijohn]

Just wanted to point out the -dead_strip linker flag is specific to the macosx linker. If you are using linux and the gnu linker, you should instead use --gc-sections as the linker flag for removing unused code.

[Spiderboydk]

Alternatively, if you compile the entire program in a single translation unit, you can make all your functions static. If they're not called within your translation unit and can't be called from another translation unit, the compiler can safely reason that it will never be called and cull it.

[JonnyRobbie]

What about some IDE hint - similar to live compile and error checking/linting - one which would highlight an actual dead code.

[shivam]

Can u make a video on how to study someone else project code ... Tools used. Because in industry we need to read lot of codes sometimes... so how we can easily do it

[shekharmaela]

Hey Jacob, I was just watching your video on pthreads and it made me wonder.
Whats the difference between manual threading via threads.h/pthreads, and using OpenMP to do it for you?

When should you use one or the other, what are the performance differences?

[artemiocabrillosjr.]

Hi Jacob, thank you for this. Is there any compiler option to display warnings if ever there are any deadcode in my code?

[IsraelBuitronD]

Hi Jacob, Thank you for your videos! They are helpful. I am also a CS professor (in México) so I give your videos to my students. I was wondering if there is a way to contribute to your videos by giving a translation to spanish. Please consider it. I am interested to do that. Greetings from Mexico.

[mazenosama]

so microcontroller compiler IDE's provide commands like these to the complier to strip down the deadcode in the background ? ... i mean is that what the IDE is doing ?

[RahulPatil-oikk]

Hi Jacob, while unit testing if function have pointer(of any type) as a argument then is it always necessary to test for null pointer for that pointer argument?

[samplesandtests]

did any one notice that printf was optimized out and replaced with puts?

[सनातनी.हिंदू]

hey! jacob, where did you learn all this.

[diceandbricks]

Even with these tools, it's good practice to delete your dead code from source files. Because it will go unmaintained and languish, until somebody decides to call that code and who knows what's gonna happen.

[MaheshKumar-lqxm]

Can you please do a video on simple json parsing in C ?
It's super complicated. And makes me think it's horrible